Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [14]
“Kind of business this place does,” I said, “I’m not surprised Mr. Cornell has a mansion. He here tonight?”
“He’s always here. I’ve been at the Paddlewheel a year, and he’s never missed a night.”
“Could you point him out to me?”
She shook her head. “He’s rarely in the Key Club, unless he’s in the back poker room.”
“Is he in the back poker room now?”
“No.” She got narrow-eyed. “Why?”
“Just like to meet him. Tell him how impressed I am. I mean, I’d heard about this place, but it exceeds all my expectations.”
She liked that. Apparently she was a proud little community-college student/waitress. “Yes! I don’t know of anything like it anywhere else around these parts.”
These parts? My God, this was the Midwest…
I asked, “What about downtown?”
The eyes got the goosed look again. “In Haydee’s Port? You don’t want to go down there, sir.”
“I don’t?”
“No! It’s just for lowlifes.”
So I left her a nice tip. She didn’t consider me a lowlife, and that made me feel good about myself.
I gambled a little. Lost twenty-five bucks at black-jack, got ahead fifty at roulette. Played video poker, a buck a shot, and in ninety minutes carved the fifty in half. Another waitress, who I’d asked for a Diet Coke, delivered it.
I asked her, “The music upstairs?”
She had a galaxy of permed blonde hair and dark blue eyes and light blue eyeshadow and big breasts that made heavy lifting for the push-up bra. “You mean upstairs at the Paddlewheel Lounge?”
“I’m talking about the top floor.”
“So am I.”
“How long does the music last?”
“Till two on weeknights. All night Friday and Saturday. We’re closed Sunday.”
Even Hades rested on the seventh day, it seemed, this branch office, anyway.
It was already close to one a.m., so I took the elevator up to the Paddlewheel Lounge. The big room had lots of neon pseudo-graffiti on the brick walls, glowing in black light—cheesy stuff that tried too hard, jagged lettering of assorted words and phrases: Da Bomb!, Awesome!, Wicked!, Rad!, Gnarly!
Not that the crowd seemed to mind, a mix of twentyand thirty-somethings, some of whom I’d seen dining downstairs. The dance floor was a raised acrylic platform with red-yellow-blue flashing lights inside, the band fronting big amplifiers on a wooden platform stage (the drummer up on his own smaller one) painted flat black but with more corny neon day-glo fake graffiti. The little dance platform could only accommodate maybe a third of the hundred or so in the lounge, so a lot of smoking and talking (that is, shouting over the band) was going on at the little round tables with red vinyl cloths.
A bar was at one end, as far away from the band as possible. The bartender was female, a pretty blonde with over-teased hair and a black leather vest over her white blouse; she wasn’t particularly busty, which was almost a relief after all those exploding bosoms in the casino.
Perched on a stool, I ordered another Diet Coke and asked her (actually, yelled at her), “What’s it like on the weekends?”
“Zoo-a-rama,” she shouted back with a friendly smile and an eyeball roll. “Hangin’ off the flippin’ rafters, my friend.”
“Good band!”
They were—they were doing “Under My Thumb” by the Stones. They all wore white shirts and skinny black ties and black leather trousers and short spiky hair, including the lead singer, a cute skinny girl.
“Not bad,” she admitted. “Smart. Called the Nodes. They play about half classic rock and half New Wave. That’s why the demo is so broad.”
“The demo?”
“Demographic. You’ll find ’em as young as twenty-one and as old as forty, out there.”
Forty didn’t sound as old to me as it used to. Also, I thought some of the girls—like one in a side ponytail, fingerless gloves and a petticoat, who was just swishing by—weren’t twenty-one. Not that I could imagine the Paddlewheel was a rigorous I.D. checker.
That was all the shouted speech I could take, so I got out the charming smile again and made sure the teased-hairdo behind the bar got a nice tip, figuring she was another minimum-wage slave.
I’d been on all three floors of the Paddlewheel